Krush

What is interesting is that after I rebooted and I tried a different game through steam upon clicking a link that would open a web page ESET popped up saying it was blocking chrome's access to the webcam.

I'll turn it off reboot, and see if the issue persists. The issue persisted.

Any other ideas?

My c:\ also has the phantom account for anti-theft which has no permissions set except 'special'. Actually, maybe around the same time this was happening I saw some weirdly named accounts appearing on the permissions lists, I didn't know what they were so I deleted them. I'm now thinking they were tied to anti-theft. Maybe deleting those somehow messed things up. Though my 2nd PC didn't delete any of those accounts and it also had/has the issue. (thanks for taking the time to assist me)

I'm unsure what exactly it's trying to execute when Steam is running, but here's an easier case to repo with ESET itself. I turn on Advanced Logging, then stop it and it pops up the message in the bottom right. Upon clicking this folder the error is shown in the image. So if someone can tell me what that link is doing I can easily figure out the issue (I hope).

Yeah.

What about this article https://support.eset.com/kb3302/?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US ? ESET is the only thing that was installed on both machines prior to the issue occurring.

Yes it still persists after an uninstall, I'm pretty sure ESET changed my permissions on the PC which is causing the issue.

I meant ESET popped up a message that said "Advanced logging has stopped and logs were created in this folder." where 'this folder' was a link and clicking that resulted in the message. I tried running windows in safe mode but the issue with steam persists. Let me try uninstalling ESET.

I tried turning on Advanced Logging and reproducing the issue, but upon stopping advanced logging and click the link in the pop-up that links to the location of the logs it also results in the "This app can't run on your PC" pop-up from windows.

Didn't see anything under the logs that looked related to this program (nothing was under HIPS), I'll try disabling. Disabling HIPS didn't change anything. I'm pretty sure it's a permissions issue by the anti-theft described here https://support.eset.com/kb3302/?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

Disabling real-time protection doesn't change it. What is HIPS? Looking at the support stuff it seemed similar to a post that said Dell PC's permissions would get messed up when anti-theft was turned on sometimes. While my custom built PC isn't a Dell it seemed like a similar issue.

If I launch a game like 'Eco' the main menu has a discord link, opening the game through steam and click that results in "this app can't run on your pc" with a command prompt behind it that after you click 'close' flashes 'Access is denied' before closing. If I launch the game as standalone without steam it works just fine. The issue is across multiple games. I've already tried reinstalling steam but it didn't change anything. This is definitely ESET causing the issue, but I'm unaware of how to fix it (I believe it to be the anti-theft protection causing it).